Conventionally, many manufacturers, including electric appliance and automobile makers, produce a variety of products in which electric systems, such as electric or electronic circuits, are used. Further, provided in correlation with these products are service manuals that furnish detailed information for use as a reference for the inspection or the maintenance and repair of the products. Ordinarily, such service manuals are supplied as printed matter, but recently, digitized service manuals (electronic service manuals), which can be browsed using PCs (Personal computers), are increasingly being provided.
Multiple technical drawings, such as circuit diagrams and board diagrams, are inserted in the service manuals. Required for the technical drawings, which include circuit diagrams and board diagrams, are means for arbitrarily enlarging, reducing or moving them during browsing. Therefore, for the electronic service manuals, the use of a vector graphics data format is desired, and for this, the most common vector graphics data format, PDF (Portable Document Format), is employed.
While most electronic service manuals are those obtained by directly digitizing the printed matter for the service manuals, there are also electronic service manuals for which a hyperlink, for coupling data, is embedded at a predetermined location so that the display of a circuit diagram, for example, can be quickly changed to display the caption for the circuit diagram.
Furthermore, in patent document 1, disclosed below, is a parts search system wherein a server and a user terminal are connected across a network, and wherein when the server receives a product or parts search request issued by the user terminal, the server transmits to the user terminal information that is related to a requested product or part.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-99550
However, for an electronic service manual wherein a hyperlink is embedded for coupling data, an electronic service manual producer must designate in advance data to be coupled, and moreover, must embed a hyperlink for coupling the data. At present, where there are service manuals for a large variety of products and an extensive number of parts are included in the service manuals, an enormous amount of labor is required to embed hyperlinks in these parts, and the embedding process is very difficult.
When, for example, the exchange of parts is required after a product has been repaired by referring to an electronic service manual, an order for parts must be issued to a dealer who sells the parts. Various modes are available for issuing the parts order to the dealer; e.g., by email, through facsimile, or by mail. Using any of these modes, an order issuing user must employ operation input means, such as a mouse or a keyboard, to enter the part name and the part number for a desired part in the text input areas of an email, or must employ writing equipment, such as a pen, to copy the part name and the part number of a desired part to paper. However, since the part name and the part number is represented, for example, merely by an alphabet or a numerical string, input errors or entry errors tend to occur, and further, when ordering multiple kinds of parts, a recurring problem is that a huge amount of labor and much time are required to prepare an order sheet.
A part search system disclosed in patent document 1 is a system whereby images, based on a parts list or a service manual, are browsed by using a user terminal, and the location of a search requested part is narrowed down in accordance with an instruction issued using a mouse, and whereby an enlarged image of a location designated by a user, using the mouse, and detailed information therefor are provided by a server, so as to support the user's search operation. Therefore, in patent document 1, the idea is not disclosed whereby information included in an electronic service manual is employed to permit the issue of an order for parts across a network.